links for 2009-06-02

  • Kevin: As the post says: "50 of the best data visualizations and tools for creating your own visualizations out there, covering everything from Digg activity to network connectivity to what’s currently happening on Twitter."
  • Kevin: Barbara Ehrenreich's commencement address to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism class of 2009 on May 16. "We are not part of an elite. We are part of the working class, which is exactly how journalists have seen themselves through most of American history – as working stiffs. We can be underpaid, we can be jerked around, we can be laid off arbitrarily – just like any autoworker or mechanic or hotel housekeeper or flight attendant.

    But there is this difference: A laid-off autoworker doesn't go into his or her garage and assemble cars by hand. But we – journalists – we can't stop doing what we do."

  • Kevin: Jeff Jarvis makes an excellent observation in his latest Guardian column: "We care less about the form of news and more about the information it imparts. That is the key strategic problem for editors and publishers hoping to charge us online: once news is known, it is knowledge that can be spread through conversation, which means it can no longer be controlled behind a pay wall."
  • Kevin: Grim reading for newspapers in the US as advertising revenue sees a record drop in the first quarter of 2009, falling "by an unprecedented 28.3%", blogs Alan Mutter. What is even more grim reading for US newspapers is that while the first three months of 2009 saw advertising revenue fall off of a cliff, the decline has started in 2006 and has been almost unabated since. That decline started long before the US went into recession, indicating that not all of the decline can be attributed to the economic downturn.